Randi Williams

And then, as they played the game over and over again, what PopBot would try to do is pick up on their pattern so that it could predict what move it could play to beat them.

And if you're between the ages of four and six, pretty soon it gets hard, if not impossible, to beat your PopBot.

There was one boy who was very frustrated by this.

And so I planted a mischievous idea in his head.

I said, well, what if you taught your pop-bot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors?

That way, as you played it, you would win every single time.

And he really liked that idea.

Our little act of AI sabotage created a unique opportunity to talk about who teaches AI the rules, what people do.

And so I asked him, well, if you can teach your pop-bot the wrong rules of rock, paper, scissors, how do you know Alexa was taught the right ones?

Which led to a very insightful conversation where he discussed how much we can trust AI and the importance of verifying what it says with an adult's help just to make sure that Alexa has been taught all the right rules.

The big idea that I want children to understand is that AI is not magic.

It's a set of rules written by people.

And it's up to us, those of us who have been around for a bit longer, to make sure that children aren't being programmed by their toys, but rather things work the other way around.

We need to raise a generation of children who know that they are the ones who get to write and even rewrite the rules of AI.

And this work, you know, starts at the dinner table.

So you're all sitting down, and a question gets asked to the nearest AI chatbot or smart toy.

When it responds, rather than just accepting that answer, wonder, I wonder why it answered the way it did.

Or ask aloud, do we agree or disagree with that answer?

Who do we think wrote the rules to make it work the way that it does?

And the thing is, you don't need to know the answers to all these questions or become some sort of AI expert.